Balancing work, Life and Online Studies
Let's Talk Balance
Is Work-Life Balance real? What do you think?
Some say it's a myth, some say it's real, some recoin the term as work-life integration or work-life choices.
Well, how can a term BALANCE be false or a myth. There is a balance in everything in the universe. Imagine the earth's magnetic force balancing all of us. If it's 0.1% more than what it has to be, will we exist here today? This Balance thing is necessary to even live in this world, isn't it?
So, YES, Balance is a must, it is not readily available for us rather we have to create the Balance. Rather I would say, YES Balance is a myth unless we CREATE it.
We often talk about Work-Life balance to other people more. But we should try talking this more to OURSELVES.
When we talk to ourselves, that's the first step we are taking towards knowing ourselves better. Most of the solutions to our problems can be simply arrived at by knowing ourselves as in:
- What do we want in life?
- How do we want it?
- What are we doing right now?
- What will be the right thing to do henceforth?
Adding Online Studies to Work-Life Balance
Sounds a bit uncomfortable, isn't it?
This is not today but from the time we humans started inventing, there is a fire of constant hunger, hunger to improvise the invented inventions or to invent new, which is burning till now and will continue to burn in the future as well.
In fact, in today's modern corporates, we call it "Continuous Improvement", "Process Improvement", "Process Optimization" etc.
So everyone working in today's world has to push themselves to learn something new to sustain the competition. This way, we won't be able to leave the work and learn things and that's where "Online learning" comes in, to play a major role. Especially after the Pandemic 2020, Online/virtual methods of learning have become more efficient and convenient to make use of.
So now since learning has become a part of our life, as one whole different component, we will have to call it "Work-Life-Learn" Balance.
Online Studies - Belong to?
As we called it work-life-learn balance, the term "Learn" can belong to both work and life as we tend to learn new things for work and learn things from life as well. Also, we can learn something like music, art, canoeing—anything which we are passionate about learning.
Coming to "Online Studies", the term "Studies" in specific refers to a proper certification course or a UG/PG Degree etc., which has a proper process to enroll and complete and obtain value out of it. Learning as discussed before, has a freedom of time whereas this, studying thing has a proper time frame in most cases. We can't keep spending so much time as long as we wish here.
We pursue something because it will help us in our ongoing career and improve it but the time we take out for pursuing it is mostly straight out of our life part and very little or negligible time out of the work part.
So I'd say that "Online studies" more belongs to the life part of work-life balance.
A Fresh Perspective - Balance
How do we balance professional and personal aspects is one important thing and here, the study part also merges in with us.
Firstly, Balance is never ever going to be the perfect split. I would say, we should stop splitting it as an exact 50-50. It can be 60-40, 30-40-30 etc. Balance can also be achieved, with different proportions including different activities.
Balancing Work, Life, and Online studies is definitely going to be tricky in this fast-paced world where upgrading and learning have become inevitable.
Balance takes different forms based on the situation we are in. It's more about flexibility and harmony than a perfect, rigid split.
For example, we might have to concentrate more on work if a deadline is coming up, and once that's over we must create some time for our personal life and studies, keeping the work part at bay—not completely, but prioritizing more on the other end since we worked fully for the deadline.
So juggling between work and online studies along with personal time, we can follow certain easy steps like:
- Using a planner to schedule work, studies, and personal activities
- Taking proper breaks from work and relaxing
- Meditating and manifestations—hidden gems that bring balance
- Physical activity at least 3 days a week to stay healthy and enjoy life
- Leveraging technology for learning—AI bots can simplify concepts
- Learning to unlearn—letting go of old habits to make space for new learnings
- Motivating yourself to stay committed, especially for weekend study courses
A Balanced Ending
Wrapping it up, maintaining a balance between these three (Work, Life, and Online studies) is not about always giving them equal priority or a perfect split of time.
It is always about the progress we make in each of these. By following some of the key steps as stated above, setting clear boundaries, it should be manageable without feeling overwhelmed or burnt out.
We can always create a lifestyle that fosters both success and well-being. Celebrate small wins to motivate yourself. Keep learning, embrace the journey because true balance is not perfection but PROGRESS.
- Niharika (MBA)
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